Virtual Earth and ESRI Data

Virtual Earth and ESRI Data

One of the questions I get asked about like clockwork when I do Virtual Earth programming sessions to government customers is "How do I get my 'ESRI data' onto the map?" I always caveat that I don't know much about ESRI products. I then tell people that Virtual Earth is a platform visualization of data on a map. It is not tied to and does not dictate the data you visualize. I always tell people that if you have the data and can expose it to the client, then you can use the APIs in the v4 Map Control to create your own tiles, draw lines, polygons, routes, pushpins, etc.

None of this really answers exactly HOW to do this. I usually recommend exposing the data through ASP.NET Web Services and using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 to make them callable from JavaScript (see tutorial and video for more details). This makes it really easy to get the data from the server and then use the v4 Map Control to visualize it.